


Marry Me (over and over and over)

by imgoingtocrash



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Takes place in the not-so-distant future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6350275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtocrash/pseuds/imgoingtocrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jake Peralta's Fool-Proof Super Awesome and Detailed Plan to Wake up Next to Amy Santiago for the Rest of His Life"</p><p>Jake realizes that he wants to propose to Amy, but after some improvised attempts that don't work out the way he thought they would, Jake finds that the right way might just be with a detailed powerpoint, a color-coded binder, and a solid plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marry Me (over and over and over)

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe this came to me at 3 AM when I had class the next day and it became this. Truly not what I expected to spend part of my Easter break on, but here we are!
> 
> I'm new to Brooklyn Nine-Nine. If you see someone bookmarking or giving kudos to some older fics, that's probably me. Hi. Thanks for writing neat stuff for me to read. It really helped me get a feel for writing for these characters for the first time.
> 
> Enjoy!

_ “Every morning, when I wake up, I think your name. I think, “Marry me,” over and over and over. It shocks me, the clarity of those words, the intensity and depth, how the emotions behind those words defy logic, possibility.” _

_\- There Are Distances Between Us by Roxane Gay_  

xx

 

He wishes that he could define the second that he started thinking about marrying Amy Santiago.

He supposes it might be early on a Tuesday morning, eyes bleary and mostly glued together in hopes that if he tries hard enough he’ll just drift right back to sleep. Instead, he blinks a few times, exhales gently, and takes notice of the weight pressing up against his stomach. It’s Amy, having shifted positions with him at some point during the night, now making her the smaller spoon. He takes advantage of the moment, pulling her closer and inhaling the scent of lavender from the shampoo in her hair.

Yeah, he thinks. He could get used to spending the rest of his waking mornings just like this.

It sort of clicks in his brain then, like when they’re solving a tough case and the evidence all seems to sort itself together in front of him. It’s a sense of clarity, maybe. Being with Amy for the rest of his life isn’t just a thing that he wants, but something that is completely and totally possible.

Amy makes a soft grunt, as if she can sense he’s thinking too hard in her sleep, and pulls his arm around her a little tighter. 

The immediate terror that comes with most of his big life-changing revelations dissipates. He feels his thoughts drifting under the sudden renewed heaviness of his eyelids.

When the alarm wakes them, she’s out of the bed in seconds, prodding him not-so-gently and shoving a bowl of sugary cereal in his face as he goes through the paces of trying to put his pants on when he should’ve been out of bed 30 minutes ago.

He thinks he’s alright with these types of mornings too.

 

xx

 

Then again, maybe it’s when they visit her family at Christmas. Her parents live in New Jersey, but it’s a trip Amy makes at least monthly, being one of the only Santiago children living close enough to come home on the regular. He tagged along a few times as her partner, as her friend. It’s different now that she’s finally told her mother that they’re dating. (He totally didn’t eavesdrop on the conversation, but if he had, Amy might’ve mentioned something about them being “serious” and “long-term” and it doesn’t scare Jake into running the other way like it might’ve with girlfriends past.)

The Santiago clan is big, averting his attention this way and that. One of Amy’s brothers, the one that’s an accountant, wants to hear more cop stories. Her dad tries to give him a ‘hurt my daughter, I hurt your face’ speech, but halfway through he admits Amy could probably handle kicking his ass just fine herself and quickly diverts the talk to sports. Her eldest brother, Anton, actually gives the overprotective older brother schtick, but he ends it with hugging both Jake and Amy and saying “Finally!” so Jake thinks they’re probably okay.

It’s being surrounded by the warmth, that makes him think about their future. The way Amy talks to her little nieces and nephews as they run around her feet in turns. How her mother cups his cheeks in her hands and calls him Jacob, even though everyone else, even his own mother, calls him Jake. It’s never boring, stilted, or awkward. Amy calls it crazy, calls it a madhouse, always apologizes for asking him to come and deal with all of them.

Jake just compliments Mrs. Santiago’s cooking for the umpteenth time, stating it as the reason he’s content to go through any and all of her other family members to get to it.

When they end up sleeping in her childhood bedroom, staring up at the glowing, stick-to-the-ceiling stars Amy rearranged to form actual constellations in her childhood, he doesn’t share his thoughts about any of their future children growing up with such a great family.

 

xx

 

Amy starts their relationship with some spectacular forms of PDA (Not that he’s celebrating sort-of killing a guy, but he’s also not exactly complaining about the way Amy broke her usual policy of following the rules at any and all times to make out with him in the Evidence Room.) Once things get back to some semblance of normal, however, there’s a significant shift.

If he sits too close to her in the break room, she unconsciously shifts a few inches away. When he slides his chair vigorously into the side of her desk to ask about a case file, she makes sure there’s plenty of desk space between them. Even when they’re out at the bar, completely off the clock, it takes her a little time to shake off the walls she’s seemed to build for herself about interacting with him in a casual capacity.

He gets it, sort of. (Though he thought the point of filling out those ridiculously long and personal PR forms was so that they could be together publicly.) So he lets her have it, most of the time. He can’t resist the occasional flirt or tease, because he’s been doing that since they were partnered up all those years ago and she can’t seem to stop herself completely either.

Then, one day, after less than a year of being together, she holds his hand. It shouldn’t be a big deal. She holds his hand all the time, likes to link their fingers while they’re on the couch watching movies or when they’re walking back from a night out.

In this particular instance, however, he’s sitting on the edge of where their desks connect, looking a whiteboard filled to the brim with case notes and crime scene photos. He’s tired from accepting a double shift because this case was nagging at him anyways, and it’s starting to all turn into a blur of red marker. He’s considering giving it up, passing it to a pair of new eyes or simply leaving it until tomorrow, when there’s a feather-light pressure on his left hand that causes him to flinch.

It’s Amy’s hand, cupped over his own. When he looks at her, she simply gives his hand a squeeze, then leaves her hand where it sits on top of his before moving her gaze back to the file in her lap.

It seems casual, almost distracted, but Jake knows Amy doesn’t really do things without thinking about them first. It’s a quiet encouragement, but it’s a gesture she hasn’t done within the walls of the precinct in a long time.

She gets more comfortable from there, in her own way.

When the power in the station goes out during a blizzard, instead of trying to tough it out on her own despite her cold tendencies, she compromises by stealing his leather jacket within the first hour. It almost dwarfs her, the arms just a little too long and loose around her own, but it’s almost cute how she keeps pulling the sleeves up and saying that it’s sort of like being hugged by him all of the time. 

(When the power doesn’t turn back on and the precinct is trapped in overnight eating vending machine snacks for dinner, she uses it as a blanket for both of them when he wins the rock-paper-scissors-off to see who gets to sleep on the break room couch for the night.)

She grasps his hand in the mornings, holding it until they separate to their respective desks. She ropes her arm around his back when they’re coming off of a shift, when she mumbles into his chest that they should order in and watch Law & Order until they fall asleep.

It’s in those moments that he wants her as his partner, in everything, always. Like, realistically, he works with Charles and Rosa and even the Sarge on other cases. It’s probably better that they aren’t literally always partners. There are some days he barely sees her except in passing because cop hours, even when you’re both cops, are the worst.

He sees her when he comes home, often without having to ask her to come over. He goes to her place and makes her breakfast in the mornings because they both know her chances of making edible pancakes with anything but Bisquick are slim.

So, the whole wanting to marry Amy thing just comes together. It’s all of that stuff. Probably other things that have happened throughout their partnership that have all morphed together under the ‘Reasons My Girlfriend is Awesome’ umbrella.

 

xx

 

He tries asking her. Nothing official, just a straight up, non-commital-but-he-totally-means-it, “Marry me?” when she brings him breakfast in bed one morning. (It’s her oatmeal, only improved by the shovels full of sugar that she claims cancel out any and all health benefits, making it perfect for his tastes.)

Amy just snorts, handing him the bowl and digging into her own. All she does is call him a butthead, which doesn’t answer his question and causes him to retaliate by almost slapping her own bowl of oatmeal into the sheets on his way to dig his elbow into her ribs.

 

xx

 

Amy goes undercover. 

It leaves a hole in his chest that he suspects she would echo she felt when he went under with the mafia. 

The thing is, it’s not supposed to be dangerous. She’s just supposed to be a secretary. All she’ll do is see who comes in and out and get a look at what meetings are happening when. It’s just recon, just white collar crime. No mafia, no guns, no pretending to enjoy going to seedy bars with women who look nothing like his partner who he confessed to liking five minutes before he had to go away for six months.

He was only told of her assignment because they started living together and Amy couldn’t just stop coming home one night without saying something. (Rosa, who was working the case with Amy, says “They could’ve told you she died.” Which is probably said to be comforting, but thinking about Amy in some dark alley bleeding out without him just throws him into a vomit-inducing panic attack a few minutes later.)

At the very least, when the final takedown occurs, he’s allowed to be part of the team. Holt makes a special case for him, even though the FBI has jurisdiction and plenty of guys, a few who he knows from his own bust, that could take care of it just fine.

There are at least seven higher ups guilty of financial fraud meeting at a celebratory company party. Amy’s on comms, and it’s only been about a month, but he feels like he can breathe properly again when he hears her mutter that she’s seen all of the suspects entering the room.

The FBI team enters through the stairs, clad in their bulletproof vests and armed to the teeth even though it seems to Jake like it might be overkill considering there’s no evidence the white collar criminals suddenly started selling heavy weaponry.

Their arrival stays quiet catching the first four targets, as they sequestered themselves off into another room for a celebratory bottle of whiskey, creating no escape for them but the window. (Which did not work for the one guy who attempted to jump out of it and ended up slapping into the glass without creating a crack.)

The next two make a scene, running through the party, sending trays of champagne to the ground, and pushing guests out of the way. They’re easily caught when they go for the elevators because the stairs were obviously blocked.

The last guy, the ringleader, runs into his office and down a secret staircase that Amy not only knew about, but pursues him down on. Jake isn’t in charge, but when he points at two FBI guys and gestures for them to help cut the guy off at the bottom, they don’t protest. 

They find Amy fighting the perp. She seemingly has the upper hand, crushing the guy’s pistol-holding hand into the concrete wall, but when it doesn’t drop, Amy is kicked roughly down the final staircase to the exit.

Jake doesn’t think so much as react. He doesn’t know if it’s the cop training or his initial instinct to protect the people he loves, but he shoots for the perp’s right arm and it’s jarring enough that the guy screams and drops the weapon down the stairs. The perp locks his sights on Amy, but she not only has the dropped firearm, but her own. This, combined with the FBI’s yells of “Put your hands in the air!” and Jake’s own pointed weapon finally fizzle the fight out of the guy.

Amy cuffs the bastard, reading him his rights before passing him off to the task force guys Jake brought along with him.

There’s a moment where they’re just sort of standing there in silence. He feels a grin work its way across his face, then she’s smiling too, and he thinks maybe he’s lifting Amy off the floor a little when they finally hug.

“Seeing as I kinda just saved your life and all, ma—“ Jake starts, and as soon as he realizes that’s probably not the best way to start a proposal, she kisses him. It’s distracting and filling his senses comfortably, so he drops it.

(He also realizes that he doesn’t have a ring, and maybe that’s why she’s not catching his hints that he’s being serious about this whole marrying her thing.)

 

xx

 

They’re on a date. It’s this big romantic thing to make up for all of the missed dates due to Amy’s undercover work and the fact that they’re up to their eyeballs in paperwork a lot right now. Either way, about halfway through dinner, Jake thinks that it might be a great time to propose.

It’s a romantic night, and he’s a romantic person, so even though he still can’t afford the ring he’s been looking at online for like a month, he doesn’t think she’ll mind.

After dinner, they start walking. Amy seems to think it’s a bit aimless, slightly tipsy from the wine at dinner, but he leads them to the park where she kissed him against a tree and he realized that kissing Amy was something he definitely wanted to experience more than 2 times in his life. 

He’s crafting a speech in his head the closer they get. It starts out frantic, all of these feelings bubbling up and catching in his throat. He almost gives up on the park just so that he doesn’t have to keep it all in his head, but he relents when Amy gives him an odd side-eye at his quiet demeanor.

The park is right there. If he just gets them to the stupid tree, he can tell her how much he loves her, how much he just wants to be with her forever, how there’s a metaphorical ring burning a hole in his pocket because he’s been dying to tell her all of this for _so long_.

“Is that…is that a drug deal?” Amy says, and it snaps Jake out of his thoughts because come on dude, seriously? 

Sadly, Amy is good at her job, and she’s not wrong. It’s out of a terrible movie, all dark hoodies and a quick exchange of cash for a bag of white powder that definitely isn’t flour. (Unless they’ve stumbled upon an illegal foreign flour trading ring, which Charles claims is real and Jake has very serious doubts about.)

So what was a romantic date turns into an undercover mission where they revisit making out against a different tree before slapping handcuffs on both the buyer and the seller before dragging them a few streets up to Amy’s car.

It’s small time. The supplier will likely never be caught from the collar. They caught something any uniform is trained to look out for.

It’s still not the worst date they’ve ever had, despite his ruined plans.

 

xx

 

The more Jake considers proposing to Amy, staring at the ring he finally ended up purchasing with the help of Gina from a second-hand jewelry store, the more he has to consider his strategy. So far it’s been very random. Spontaneous, but with romantic intentions all around. Every few months he thinks of proposing, and then it fizzles out.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to get married, or even that she just doesn’t want to get married to him. They’ve talked about it, once or twice. It’s mostly towards their parents, fielding questions about the when by stating their intention of “eventually.”

He thinks Amy might beat him to the punch if he doesn’t hurry up, which would suck since he’s kind of been holding this back for a while. They would probably end up in a competition where they keep saying “No, you marry _me_!” at increasing volumes until one of them caves for one reason or another.

While fun, that’s not exactly what he’s been imagining.

 

xx

 

He finally figures it out one day when he catches her sitting in the middle of their living room writing in one of her binders.

“What’re you doing?” He asks, falling onto the couch next to her with a beer in each hand. 

Amy takes the offered drink and takes a long swig before answering. “Manuel’s getting married, and he asked me to help plan the wedding,” At Jake’s clear look of struggle, she adds “My youngest brother?”

Jake nods, because he does remember some conversation between Amy and her mother about Manuel and his new girlfriend, but it feels like it was a short time ago. “Didn’t he just start dating her?”

Amy shrugs. “He’s always been a head-first sort of person. Goes with what he feels in the moment. I kind of figured this might happen. That’s why he asked me to help.” Amy tilts her head to the binder, which already seems full of documents about venues and catering.

“You’ve only been home to for like an hour.” Is all he says, and Amy just shrugs, as if it wasn’t difficult. For someone that works on binders with color coding for fun, he doubts it was, but she throughly researches what she works on and these sorts of things are important.

Which makes him realize that she might’ve looked at some of these sources for other reasons. Marrying him one day sorts of reasons.

After their conversation, Jake doesn’t snoop through their home and find a big binder labelled "The Santiago-Peralta Wedding Plan." She doesn’t hide most of her binders, but if she did, it probably wouldn’t be anywhere that he could accidentally spill coffee on it. (Which is on almost any flat surface, if he’s being honest.)

This leaves him to create a plan of his own. Harder, but manageable and probably worth more proposal points, if those are a thing he can possibly earn.

 

xx

 

The next week, Jake tells Amy there’s a very important meeting happening in the briefing room before her lunch break. She nods and goes back to typing at her computer, because she’s the type of person who knows when they’re having a meeting because she’s already checked the schedule.

When she walks in and sees the TV set up, but no other detectives in attendance, she furrows her brow at Jake. “Did you change the meeting schedule from Holt’s computer so that we could have sex in here? Because that’s not only a heinous breach of protocol but also not going to happen.”

Jake waggles his eyebrows suggestively, because he hadn’t considered that before and wonders if she has, but stops himself. “No. This is an official meeting. There’s a binder and everything.” Jake grabs the stuffed grey binder from the table behind him and thrusts it into Amy’s arms.

Amy gives him a suspicious look, but sits in the front row.

“Thank you.” Jake says, hitting a button on the connected laptop to show the first presentation slide.

The title reads:

_Jake Peralta's Fool-Proof Super Awesome and Detailed Plan to Wake up Next to Amy Santiago for the Rest of His Life_

Presented by Detective Jake Peralta

 

Amy’s mouth slowly parts. She looks at the title of the slideshow. Then flips open the binder to see the same. “Jake, is this—“

 

_Step One: Be in a Relationship With Amy_

 

Jake cuts her off. “As you already know, Step One is complete. Since I told you that I liked you romantic stylez with a z, we danced around the fact that you were totally and completely in love with me for the entire duration of our partnership,” Amy scrunches her brow in disproval, but Jake continues. “What I didn’t realize until then was that I felt the same way. We’re both disgustingly in love people, Ames. You’ll find the examples on pages one through fifteen.”

 

_Step Two: Decide to Propose to Amy_

 

“This step went through many iterations. I tried it casually. I tried to be romantic and take you back to the place we shared our second kiss. I even tried after you were briefly on death’s door and in awe of our combined heroism. It didn’t work. You were immune to my epic proposing skills.”

“Jake, you only asked me once, and I thought you were joking! The other times you just let me make out with you and got distracted.” Amy has her arms crossed, but her heart’s not in the argument.

 

_Step Three: Buy a Ring_

 

“Nevertheless, I pursued. I thought you would be more perceptive if I added in the lame stuff other people do, like buying rings. So, if you’ll turn to page 33,” Jake waits as Amy flips in the binder, where a picture of the ring he has currently sitting in his pocket is displayed. “Gina and I searched endlessly to find you the right ring. My financial situation has improved since living with you, but since your salary is the same as mine, you know going to Tiffany’s wasn’t an option. Instead, we found a subtle piece that Gina assures me is actually real silver with a diamond on it and not some cheap knock off.”

 

_Step Four: Plan the Proposal_

 

Jake hits the space bar, displaying a picture with their coworkers heads displayed with his own. “Amy, I know you. Probably better than you ever thought anyone would ever know you because none of the other men you dated saw you during a stakeout session where it got late and we decided to play 2 Truths and a Lie to stay awake. I know before we met you’d planned out just about every aspect of your life, which also probably included your future wedding. Which was when I decided to retaliate and plan this proposal instead.”

Amy is a little teary eyed, but doesn’t miss the chance to say “I don’t know if it’s a retaliation when I made a wedding binder when I was 10 and didn’t even know you.”

He rolls his eyes and continues, because, semantics. “Terry taught me how to use Powerpoint and create all of the stuff in that binder. Charles mostly just cried for half an hour, but then when he recovered, he gave me the idea to ask you here, where we were all introduced to you for the first time. Gina helped me pick out the ring and claimed that she was the true driving force behind us getting together this entire time. Rosa just congratulated and patted me on the shoulder, but from her that’s like a warm hug, so it’s all good. Finally, Captain Holt changed the schedule last week so that you wouldn’t be suspicious about coming to the meeting.” He hits the space bar on the laptop again, then pulls the ring box from his pocket and gets on one knee next to the chair she’s sitting in.

 

_Step Five: Propose_

 

“Amy, I figured that really cliché pact I made with Gina about getting married when we were both 45 was going to happen before I met someone I loved as much as you. We’re awesome partners, best friends, and I don’t even care that you don’t love _Die Hard_ as much as I do. I made this presentation and the binder and got you the ring this time because you’re a planner. We didn’t plan to get together. It was messy and long but it was worth it. So since I ruined your perfectly planned binder about how your life would go, I’m giving you this one. Write in it, color code it better than I could ever hope to do. Just say you’ll marry me so that I can get up off of this spot on the floor where I’m pretty sure someone puked last week and let me start planning to live the rest of my life with you.”

Amy is actually sort of crying, at this point. “Jake, you didn’t even really _ask_ —“

“Amy!” Jake says, waving the ring in her face a little.

“Yes, okay, yes I’ll marry you!” Amy stands up then, so Jake does too, putting the silver band on her finger. She kisses him, hands around his neck before putting her face into his neck until he can feel the tear tracks against his skin.

Amy sniffles a little, smiling and recomposing herself before the rest of the Nine-Nine, seemingly waiting and/or eavesdropping at the door bursts in.

“Did she say yes? You said yes, right? Of course you did, you’re wearing the ring,” Charles asks, immediately crowding them both and pulling them into an awkward but appreciated hug. “Right? Am I right?”

Amy and Jake nod as Charles pulls them back into the hug even tighter, blowing out their eardrums with his excited squeals of delight as the rest of the group comes over to offer their congratulations.

Jake separates himself from the group to quickly press the laptop’s space bar one more time.

 

_Step Six: Have the Most Kickass Wedding in the History of All Weddings_

 

**Author's Note:**

> When creating this fic, I thought about Amy. She loves binders and organization and order and I thought that maybe, long ago, she might've made a binder for her future relationship goals. (Meeting the Parents, Anniversaries, etc.) Then here comes Jake and she just sort of forgets all about those little check-marked boxes in a dusty old binder because she's for once in her life just enjoying their relationship for what it is. (Not to mention that he's already so fully part of her life in most of the ways people are from dating.)
> 
> When considering how Jake might propose, I thought that Amy might not take any of his spontaneous attempts seriously. Not because she doesn't want to marry him, but because she's not even thinking about it as something she's concerned with. Also, it's interesting to have Jake put himself in Amy's position and create a romantic gesture from things that aren't traditionally romantic. 
> 
> This fic was just fun to write, mostly because I think this show allows for some flexibility and humor in the writing as a whole. Here's to Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Season 4 renewal! I'm happy I get to keep watching and hopefully I'll keep writing about this awesome show as well.
> 
> Let me know what you thought of the fic! I greatly appreciate any and all Kudos, Bookmarks, and Comments I receive.


End file.
